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<title>The Path to Hell is Paved With Good Intentions by Shadsie</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24995332">The Path to Hell is Paved With Good Intentions</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadsie/pseuds/Shadsie'>Shadsie</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Based on discussion on tumblr, Comedy, Gen, Humor, Joke Fic, Snark Fic, crackfic</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 03:41:57</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,121</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24995332</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadsie/pseuds/Shadsie</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Hordak did nothing wrong!</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>20</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Path to Hell is Paved With Good Intentions</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><strong>The Path to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions<br/>
</strong><br/>
<br/>
All he wanted was to bring peace to this forgotten world. <br/>
<br/>
The Horde was about peace and stability.  It was about order and enlightenment – technological marvels! Swift travel between the stars!  The ever-expanding gaining of knowledge!  Horde Prime perhaps had a strict way, but all creatures had a place within his empire. <br/>
<br/>
That is where Hordak came in.  Banished to the front lines as an efficiency-measure regarding his failing health and sucked through a vortex, he was here upon a primitive world.  The levels of technology and culture that he saw bordered upon the Medieval, much of it simply agrarian.  The political structures were far worse – a series of monarchies dominating the common citizens, warring with one another and maintaining a sharp-divide between a class of genetically-gifted magic-users and those lacking in such gifts. <br/>
<br/>
What a chance to prove himself!  If he could organize this rabble, enlighten them and bring them to a utopian peace where non-magical people and the magic-users were on an equal playing-field and everyone could rise in respect by merit rather than accident of birth, he would be welcomed back into the fold, his own merit recognized and… he could be healed. <br/>
<br/>
</p><p>Indeed, it was a desire for survival and compassion that drove this stranger from beyond the stars, but changing a world for the better was never easy, nor was it pretty. <br/>
<br/>
Hordak began by merely preaching a gospel.  After he picked himself up from the damaged remains of his space-ship, he would talk to anyone who would listen.  His language was recognized due to the universal-translation program installed in his brain as a standard-model Horde-clone and he was quick to learn anything that he did not readily understand.  He built himself a home out of his wreckage and within a matter of just a few years, found himself expanding upon it as he gained a following. <br/>
<br/>
Many were those disaffected by the magic-using bickering royals of the small planet that its peoples called Etheria.  There were a great number of people – species even, that were essentially people without a country.  Reptilians and fox-folk were driven to the no-man’s lands and lived a harsh existence where crops would not grow.  The Scorpioni Kingdom was beset by all of the other kingdoms, a few in temporary alliances with each other until they saw the scorpion-folk wiped out. They needed Hordak for even a remnant to survive.  All of these various rouges and disaffected peasants allied with Hordak, keen to use the technology he provided and created to improve and save their lives. <br/>
<br/>
He introduced the concept of vaccination to the planet.  Childhood mortality from native diseases dropped in the lands he was given control of dramatically.  The new “Horde” also rather enjoyed air conditioning. <br/>
<br/>
Oh, but the other kingdoms were suspicious of the budding kingdom of traders, rejects and rouges.  They suspended their various wars and allied under the banner of the immortal queen of Bright Moon to attack the holdings.  Hordak instructed his people in how to fight – in military strategy and tactics.  Sadly, there was much death on both sides, which necessitated Hordak’s creation of an orphanage in what became known as the Fright Zone.  (It was a derogatory-term formed by the cruel angel-queen of Bright Moon to inspire loathing in her subjects, and, of course, distraction them from the inequality inherent in her kingdom.  Hordak and his nation of outcasts took it as a name of pride.  They of course would be terrors, frights – for Freedom). <br/>
<br/>
Where others might leave foundlings to die, the Horde took them in.  This program was well under-way when Hordak happened to find a lost baby in the middle of a field, the victim of another mysterious portal rather than warfare. <br/>
<br/>
Hordak hated some of the assignments that he felt he had to send his soldiers on.  Thaymore was a village on the edge of the Whispering Woods that served as a front for training guerrilla warriors under Bright Moon’s terrorism.  Sadly, they forced many civilians to live there.  Businesses, homes and farms that were supporting the guerrillas had to be destroyed as a matter of tactics.  The noncombatants were too well-fed on propaganda to join the Horde whenever they offered them a way out of the cycle.<br/>
<br/>
And no one quite understood the discipline that Hordak sometimes gave his Force Captains.   His oxygen-depletion device was a training-tool and a matter of scientific-curiosity.  Hordak needed to know what kinds of atmospheres he could send the natives of this planet who worked for him into and how much of a depletion they could stand so he could outfit them properly for dangerous environs.  He had lost his temper with Force Captain Catra, who, honestly, at that point, had become a danger to his life with her lies.  He had the medical staff give her oxygen when she’d passed out before taking her to the prison block. <br/>
<br/>
He had to preserve order in the ranks and defend himself, but he wasn’t a monster! <br/>
<br/>
As for Catra’s exile, well, Beast Island, as he had learned from the Scorpion King was Etheria’s premier vacation-spot!  He had no idea what Shadow Weaver was telling the cadets about it! She had convinced him upon her desire to join his nation that she was a good mother figure!  She had extensive experience with children! <br/>
<br/>
Entrapta had convinced him that they needed Catra’s skills to hunt for lost First Ones’ Tech in the Crimson Waste.  He allowed Force Captain Scorpia to go with her so she’d at least have a friend with her on a dangerous journey! <br/>
<br/>
The Salineas incident – oh Salineas! Jewel of the shore-kingdoms!  It was long-overdue for a clearing of undergrowth.  He had meant to give it a pin-point trim with his laser-canon.  He had no idea that the fires would grow out of control!  If only his lost Entrapta could have met him in battle!  He could have convinced her back to his side and she could have used her brains to help him quell the disaster! <br/>
<br/>
It would have gone up in flames, anyway, eventually, given that Princess Mermista was kipping with that pyromaniac pirate, Sea Hawk. <br/>
<br/>
When he met with Queen Glimmer at a confrontation in the Fright Zone the poor dear had a bee on her cheek! She wasn’t even aware of it!  Hordak helpfully tried to swat it off before it stung her and swelled up her pretty face! He did not know his own strength in Entrapta’s armor! <br/>
<br/>
And in the end, Prime saw all of his good works, but found them insufficient. <br/>
<br/>
Let us weep bitter tears for a man of only good intentions who tried so hard! </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Based on a thread on tumblr that turned into joking.  More or less based upon perceptions that some She-Ra fans seem to have of Hordak-fans in the fandom, the false idea that we baby him too much / think he's totally innocent.  We know the score.  We enjoy a villain and even those of us with the most sympathy for his own chain-of-harm victimhood at the hands and cables of Horde Prime are aware and honest about him having done a lot of Bad Things.  </p><p>I had a lot of fun coming up with crack "excuses" for those blatantly bad things, although a couple of them were jokes on the thread.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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